


you're not ordinary (you're special)

by whitedandelions



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Fix-It, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 15:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17962838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitedandelions/pseuds/whitedandelions
Summary: Vanya just wants to be useful, even if she is ordinary.  So she watches Reginald train the other children, and when she sees how broken he leaves them, she steps in and helps.





	you're not ordinary (you're special)

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of feelings about Vanya being neglected and I wanted to write a quick Fix-it to resolve all those feelings.

 

Vanya may be ordinary.  She may have no powers at all.  But that doesn’t mean she has to be useless in a house full of children with powers.

She watches Reginald – she refuses to think of him as Father as the rest do, not with his countless barbs about her being _ordinary_ – and learns the way he does things.

The first time she interrupts him, his glare makes her shake in fear.  The second time she does, he looks thoughtful.

“Vanya,” says Reginald, one day in the afternoon when the other kids are out on a mission, “How would you like to be useful?”

She only has a second to bury the pain from hearing him imply she _isn’t_ useful, because she’s not, not in the way Reginald wants her to be, and jumps at the chance. 

* * *

At first, the others don’t listen to her.  She’s ordinary to them, she doesn’t have powers, and such shouldn’t have a say in their training.

But Reginald doesn’t have powers either.  And they listen to _him_.

So she continues to try.  She sits in on their training and keeps a notebook full of information and theories, and when Reginald leaves, she gathers her courage and tries to motivate them in a different way.  Reginald is brisk and stern and _always_ disappointed, and she knows first-hand that that isn’t the way to learn at all.  She learns better without him there, and she figures it’s the same for the other children.

She tries first with Number Five because he’s always been the kindest to her.  He frowns at her when she suggests something, and she braces herself for a scathing response.  He’s always been belligerent to Reginald, but never to _her_ , and he seems to realize what he’s doing before he says anything.  Instead, he takes her advice, and when it works, when he’s there one second in front of her and then behind her in the next, he’s shaking and smiling up at her.

She mentions it to Reginald the next day, with her notebook full of notes and theories and everything she’s ever written down about the other children, and he takes one look at it before he brushes it aside.

“Don’t be silly, Number Seven,” he says, and then returns back to _his_ notebook.  “You are ordinary.  You wouldn’t know how to train any of them.”

She swallows her response, because she might be ordinary, but so is _he_ , and she can be useful, he said so just earlier.  He’s training her in the way that he thinks matters, so that if he’s gone, the Umbrella Academy will still have a handler and that’s _her_.

He teaches her how to find missions, who to send and how to send them, how to be a tactical mastermind behind the comms, and yes, she knows that’s all useful information to know and she can help out her siblings that way, but she still thinks he’s going about it all the wrong way and Number Five is proof of that.

* * *

She still doesn’t get along with any of her other siblings.  She thinks Allison doesn’t like her because she’s the only other girl in the house, and Luther is close to Allison so that means he hates her, too.  Diego is attached to Mom, and he doesn’t really spend time with all of them, and she doesn’t even know where Klaus is most of the time.  So she tries next with Ben because Ben is sweet and kind and hates going out on missions because he doesn’t understand his power.

She reads and reads up on any and all information she can find, sometimes even late into the night when Grace has turned off the lights and she’s using a stolen candle to see.  She doesn’t have to rush, but every time Ben comes back with the blood of criminals dried on his face, he looks broken and she _hates_ it.  She doesn’t mind how sleepy it makes her because _she’s_ not sent out on missions, she doesn’t have powers, and if this is the only way she can be useful, she’ll take it.

She still isn’t ready when she approaches Ben.  But she sees the way Reginald’s training leaves him even more broken than he is when he comes back for missions, and she stays even though Reginald’s left.

She sits there for what feels like hours before Ben realizes she’s still there, and they don’t really know each other, but Ben moves, and then he’s leaning against her from where they’re sitting up against the wall.

He’s frail and bony and _cold_ , so she doesn’t move away.  Instead, she tentatively pulls out her notebook and hands it to him.

Reginald had always encouraged Ben to pull out the monsters full of hatred.  The monsters that would help him take down criminals on their missions, that wouldn’t hesitate to tear a human limb from limb.  But she thinks Ben’s power is more complicated than that.  He lets those monsters free from wherever they come from, and letting them use his body like that isn’t a _good_ thing, not with the way it leaves him drained.

“Oh,” says Ben, when he’s to the bottom of her handwritten notes, and his finger is left at the last note she’s written.  She thinks he’s good, no matter the monsters that come from him, and she writes it because she had to, when Reginald had mentioned off-hand that he thought the monsters were _bad_ and that Ben was their link to the human world, so what did that make him?

She knows it hurts, knows the way Reginald’s words might be taken the wrong way, so she writes it even though she shouldn’t have.  But it does more good than harm, because Ben’s eyes are wide and large, and they’re still pressed up against each other, so she feels the way Ben is slowly getting warmer with each second.

The next time Reginald finishes training with Ben, Ben asks her to stay behind.  This time, he doesn’t summon a monster with violent tentacles, instead he summons a fairy, and the dust it leaves behind is just as potent.  She knows Reginald won’t be happy, but when is he ever, so she hugs Ben and hopes her smile is as brilliant as his is.

* * *

The others don’t need her. 

Allison makes that clear one night after Ben and her finish their conversation after dinner.  She overhears them discussing Vanya’s latest discovery of an interesting monster, and she turns her nose up at them.

“I won’t need your help,” she tells Vanya, and Vanya tries not to take it to heart because Allison doesn’t need anyone’s help.  She doesn’t even need Mom’s, even though her power doesn’t work on Mom like it does on everyone else, so Vanya just nods and looks away.

Ben doesn’t take it as lightly as she does, and instead, says quietly but no less firm, “She’s helped _me_.”

Allison looks briefly taken aback because Ben is quiet most of the time and lets her roll over him whenever she wants.  She looks at him, then at Vanya, and her sneer worsens.  “That’s not surprising,” she says, and flounces off before either of them can say anything.

“You don’t have to talk back to her for me,” she says when she’s far enough away, and Ben shakes his head.

“I can’t let her talk to you like that,” Ben says, quietly, “not when she’s wrong.”

She doesn’t think Allison’s wrong because her page on Allison is woefully blank.  There’s not much to improve on for her, not with her power clear cut as it is, and sometimes Vanya’s jealous.  It’s obvious Reginald adores Allison for her power and can’t say no to her, and before everything, that’s what Vanya dreamed of.

But she thinks that it’s a lonely existence for all that Luther trails after her like a lonely puppy.  Allison’s confident and her ego is huge, but Vanya still wouldn’t trade her life for Allison’s.  She might be ordinary, and their father might not love her, but maybe that’s not all there is to life.

“it’s okay,” she says, more to placate Ben than anything else, because Allison’s words don’t hurt.  She’s about to explain herself, when there’s shuffling and Klaus is there when she looks up.

“Is it true?” he demands, and for the first time she’s looking at Klaus, she sees clarity in his eyes.  “You’ve helped him?”

She nods, her heart breaking because she isn’t allowed to sit in on Klaus’ training, not when there’s a dead body in there.  Reginald isn’t a good father, but even he draws the line somewhere and apparently dead bodies is it.

But she doesn’t understand because she’s allowed to sit in on Ben’s trainings and Ben talks to monsters from who knows where and at least Klaus is talking to humans, even if they’re dead. 

Not seeing Klaus’ power firsthand doesn’t mean she doesn’t take notes, though.  She’s read so many ghost stories, even when they keep her up even later than when she was reading books for Ben’s power because of how scary they all are, and she thinks she can help if he lets her.

She rummages for her notebook and spreads it out in front of them.  The three of them hover over it, and they spend the rest of the hour going over things for Klaus to try out.  She doesn’t know if it’ll help because all her theories are borne out of fiction books, but apparently, talking about it is enough because when Klaus leaves them, he looks a lot more cheerful than she’s ever seen him.

* * *

Klaus brings Diego to their next meeting.  Diego’s shy and stutters, still, but Klaus just brushes past all of that with the way words fall from his mouth without a single pause.  Klaus talks enough for the both of them, and he regales the two of them with stories he apparently heard from the dead.

“They’re not so bad,” he tells them, “like you said.  They just want someone to talk to.”

Vanya flushes at that, because it had been an offhand thought she had written but Klaus had taken it to heart.  She doesn’t think all the ghosts could be as nice as Klaus is implying, not when she’s seen Klaus scared out of his mind, but she thinks this is a step up anyway.

She’s glad they’re getting along now that Klaus isn’t scared witless by the ghosts.  She’s always felt kinship with Klaus because even though he has powers, his powers aren’t combat orientated and Reginald spends the most of his time trying to train Klaus’ powers to be more effective in combat.  He never has a kind word for any of them, but she thinks he’s especially horrible to Klaus, and she hates it because he’s not ordinary like she is, he doesn’t deserve to be ridiculed and trapped in a room with dead bodies.

But she’s not in a position to say anything, not now anyway, so she tries to help Klaus as best as she can by reading more and more ghost stories even though she hates them all.

Diego’s power _is_ combat-orientated so at first, she doesn’t know how to help him.  Reginald looks down on his stuttering, but isn’t harsh with his training – not when Diego can hit the bulls-eye every time – so her page on him is almost as blank as Allison’s.  It’s not like she doesn’t wonder about Diego’s power, but everything she can suggest Diego’s probably thought of so she doesn’t spend a lot of time wondering about it, not when she’s worried about Number Five potentially getting stuck in the past or poofing himself somewhere far, far away and about Ben summoning a monster that would rather eat him than help. 

But he asks for help and that’s enough for her to start brainstorming ways he can improve on his power.  Klaus and Ben are still there and they all try to come up with new things Diego can try.  Diego’s delighted in this new interest in his power, and she can tell by the way they talk about it like it’s something special that Diego’s slowly opening up to them.

It’s okay if she doesn’t help Diego figure out his power, because this, the four of them together, is enough.

* * *

Number Five doesn’t hang out with the four of them; he’s too busy exploring all over the world and doesn’t really have time for them.  The first time he comes back from Paris, he brings Vanya a croissant and she shares it with the other three.  They’re friends, and she’s probably closest to Number Five than any of the others, but she wishes that Number Five would just stay put for longer than a second to get to know the others.  He’s _funny_ even when he’s not trying to be, and if he wasn’t so antsy about learning how to jump in time, she thinks he’ll love to get to know sweet Ben, talkative Klaus, and shy Diego and it’s a waste that she can’t get her brothers to get along better.

She voices this one day, when Number Five pulls her aside to give her another baked good from who knows where in the world, and he frowns at her.  “They’ve never showed an interest in _me_ ,” he says, and she’s not sure if he meant to sound as defensive as he does.

“I know,” she says, because they’ve never showed any interest in her before she started being _useful_ , but she doesn’t think she should hold that against them considering how ordinary she is.  Number Five scowls at her when she says this, and then takes her hand.

It took a long while for them to figure out how to jump through time and space _together_ , but they’ve done it.  It had sparked an argument since Number Five hadn’t wanted to risk her, but Vanya had been insistent, and she trusted him to be careful and eventually, they’ve figured it out.  He still hasn’t shown Reginald yet because missions would change drastically if he knew and Number Five still doesn’t know if he can jump with other people than Vanya, so unfortunately it’s just their secret for now.  He uses that new facet of his power now, and they end up in Vanya’s favorite tree.

“You’re not ordinary,” he says, and holds her hand tight and she changes the subject because this isn’t about her.

She’s lucky Number Five has a soft spot for her, because he only scowls when she does, and then shows up, however sullenly, to the next meeting.  At first, it goes terribly because Number Five never hesitates to rile Diego up and even though Diego stutters and Vanya still thinks ‘shy’ whenever she sees him, Diego _always_ responds to Number Five with more courage than she’s seen him do anything else.  But even with them squabbling, Number Five still shows up and Diego never misses a meeting, and suddenly their group of four is now five.

* * *

It’s an accident when it first happens.

Reginald is sick, and with his age, being sick means he’s cooped up in his bedroom and they don’t see him for a week.

His sickness doesn’t stop criminals, however, and at first, Vanya thinks Reginald’s going to somehow commandeer the missions from his bed.   But the list of missions is given to _her_ , and she wonders just how sick Reginald is to trust her with her siblings’ lives. 

He’s still his harsh, unforgiving self though when he hands her the list, and every part of her wants to prove him wrong when he wonders if she can actually do it.  He’s been training her for years now, and she’s been hovering over his shoulder, picking out each mistake he makes because he _still_ doesn’t understand her siblings’ powers even now, and she knows she’s ready.

Reginald usually takes the hands-on approach when her siblings are out on a mission.  He doesn’t trust them to know what to do, but Vanya trusts them to know better than she does.  She’s never been in a situation like they have, after all, and she doesn’t think she can command them with as much confidence as Reginald does.  But she knows her brothers’ powers intimately and she can see the big picture, so when Diego hesitates, she tells him which weapon to throw and where to.

At first, she thinks she’s overstepped her bounds, but a beat passes, and then Diego’s throwing the paper shuriken they made late one night when they were brainstorming new weapons, and it finds itself in the robber’s throat.  Her next order is less shaky after that, and by the time her siblings are safe and back home, her throat is hoarse with overuse.

She helps out with three more missions before Reginald’s back, and for the first time, Reginald doesn’t look disappointed when she leaves his office.

* * *

“How come you never tell us what to do?”

She stops from where she’s trying to reach the bread on the top shelf and turns to face Luther.  “I, uh,” she says, trying to come up with a response that doesn’t show how scared she is of Allison, and then nods her thanks when Luther hops up the counter and hands down the bread to her.  “I didn’t want to be annoying,” she ends up with, and Luther gives her a look.

“You’re not annoying,” he says, and Vanya lets out a shaky breath at that because she doesn’t remember a conversation she’s ever had with Luther without Allison there.

“I don’t think he’s going to let me help out anymore, anyway,” she says, and Luther’s face changes.  He’s Number One out of all of them, and it’s just a moniker so it shouldn’t matter, but Reginald does listen to Luther so she’s only briefly surprised when during their next mission, Reginald lets her commandeer it.

She’s definitely not surprised when Allison confronts her the next day.  “You tell the others what to do,” she starts out with, “and it works.  You can help me, too.”

It sounds like a command, but Allison hasn’t used her powers on her and she thinks that’s a step-up from anything else.  And it looks as if it’s killing Allison inside to admit this, and Vanya could be petty if she wants to but if Allison’s power can help save her brothers, she’s willing to put aside her differences.

* * *

Reginald gives her full command of the team during missions.  Because of this, Reginald goes back to his other work, and doesn’t pay attention and Vanya makes a mistake.

The enemies come to the house and Reginald and Pogo and Grace are gone and it’s just her.  She doesn't even know when her siblings will be back, and her pills aren't with her and she doesn't know what will happen if she doesn't get them in time.  She doesn't have time to worry about that though, not when they're already in the house, so she hides but if she talks they’ll be able to hear her.  And Vanya hasn’t felt helpless, not in a long time, not with her sibling’s powers at her disposal, but as they sit and lay a trap for her siblings, she feels more useless than ever before.  

She’s spent years trying to help her siblings, loves them as if they were truly brother and sister by blood and not just by chance, and she knows that the traps will work.  They’ll stop Number Five from teleporting elsewhere, cut off Ben’s connection to his monsters, stop Klaus from seeing the dead, and they’re even planning to break Diego’s arms so he can’t throw anything.  And she doesn’t have the same bond with Allison and Luther, but they’re planning to cut out Allison’s vocal chords and that’s the worst thing she can imagine and she doesn’t want her sister hurt that way.

But she’s _ordinary_ , so all she can do is hide and wait and _worry_.

She wishes she wasn’t so ordinary, that she was born with powers, too, but she wasn’t and now her siblings are going to die because of it.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, the criminals are dead.  Her siblings are fine, but she doesn’t know how because she can’t remember anything.

They’re staring at her as if she’s done something, but she couldn’t have.

“You have powers,” Allison is the first to speak, and Vanya’s already shaking her head because she would know if she has powers; she’s the one that’s lived her life and she just can’t have powers.  Reginald wouldn’t have missed it, wouldn’t have taken every opportunity to tell her she’s ordinary if she did have powers.

“I don’t,” she says, and then after a beat, “How’d you guys do it?”

“We,” says Number Five, and he sounds just as serious as ever, “didn’t do anything.  _You_ did.”

She can’t help the feeling of betrayal she shoots at Number Five because he’s her first friend, he shouldn’t lie to her like this.

“He’s telling the truth,” says Ben, correctly interpreting her look.  “Vanya, you have _powers_.”

She doesn’t think Ben would lie to her, not sweet, kind Ben and she doesn’t think Number Five would lie to her either, but thinking she has powers makes her head hurt like it’s never done before, so she flees before they can keep talking.

When she comes down for dinner, Reginald is back.  He’s frowning more intensely than she’s ever seen before, and when he sees her, he doesn’t shout but he doesn’t let her join the family for dinner.

That, more than anything else, _hurts_.

* * *

There are voices at her door.

When it opens, Reginald is standing there.  Allison is beside him, and she looks mutinous even though she’s trying to hide it. 

“We’ve talked about this, Number Three,” says Reginald, and she doesn’t know what’s going on, why she’s handcuffed to her bed when she didn’t go to sleep handcuffed, and why Allison is looking more and more murderous.

Allison walks up to her, and she doesn’t turn to look back at Reginald.

“I heard a rumor,” she says, and her voice is shaky even as it echoes, “that you know you’re _special_.”

She freezes, because she doesn’t remember Allison ever using her power on her before but it feels familiar and then her vision goes blurry because all of a sudden, she _remembers_.

She’s crying when she’s finally back, and Allison is holding her up and she’s there in a way she’s never been before.

“Vanya,” she says, and she sounds like she’s crying too and Vanya tries her best to focus.  “I did this to you,” she says, “I made you think you’re ordinary.  And you’re not, okay?  You aren’t ordinary.”

Reginald is nowhere to be seen, but her siblings are.  They’re peeking over Allison’s shoulder, identical looks of worry on her face, and she smiles, albeit shakily, up at them.  “It’s okay,” is her first response, “I know I’m– “

“If you say ordinary one more time,” Number Five cuts her off, sounding murderous, and she freezes because she can’t say the word anymore, not when Allison’s used her power to let her know she’s special.

“I’m special,” she says, out loud, and watches as the looks of worry are melted away.  “I’m…” she tries again, and Ben’s hugging her and then her other siblings are, too, and she wonders how they all went from frigid and frosty to each other to _this_ , and wonders if maybe it was thanks to her. 

“Special,” says Klaus, cheerfully, “very special.”

“And you didn’t need powers to be special,” says Diego, not a hint of a stutter in his voice.  “Got it?”

He sounds challenging, but it makes her heart warm, and she buries her face into her siblings’ shoulders and wonders when she can start testing her own power.  Because she’s excited; she’s spent years figuring out the ins and outs of her siblings’ power, she can’t wait to do it for her own.

But it turns out she doesn’t have to figure it out on her own, because her siblings have spent hours brainstorming on how she could best use her power and they all regale her with their ideas for the rest of the night, squabbling on whose idea she should try first.

And maybe Reginald didn’t raise them to be close.  Maybe they never were meant to trust and lean on each other like this.

She knows now that Reginald never wanted her to learn about her power.  That he might even try something to seal away her power once more.

But she doesn’t have time to worry about it – she thinks she might not even have to worry about it, not when her siblings are on her side.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a hard time debating about how Allison's power was going to come into play, and I really wanted it to contrast the way she used it earlier in canon to tell Vanya she thought she was ordinary, but the thing I was going for was "I heard a rumor that you know that I think you're special" but it was a mouthful. I just wanted to make it clear that Vanya knows she's special not because of Allison but because of her siblings being there for her.
> 
> Also! Allison is like my favorite character in the show, so I hope I wasn't too harsh with her, here, I do think she changed a lot as an adult because of her daughter, and that she did think highly of herself as a kid because of her power and what Vanya said in that scene when they were facing off against each other.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think :)


End file.
